Kedar was not impressed. ‘So? I can do that too. I heal myself all the time.’

Swar the robot looked politely confused.

‘And how?’ asked Annie.

‘Well… I may not be able to heal that fast, but I do it all the time. Even you do it. Everyone does. When I scrape my knee, bruise my elbow, when I get an ulcer in the mouth… I kindasorta repair myself.’

Had we been mass-produced through purple screens and amethyst light, we would have been all alike. And faultless– to the point, that each, would be faulty of being so.
But the inconsistency of this block print– the overlaps, the mash-ups, the experimental, unexpected colours, even those pure bits that remain uncoloured and white– speak of how we were made. (Each with love, each with His own hands, each at a different point in time).
And that is why the inconsistency shouldn’t bother.
It’s unique.
For each.
Because that is how, together, we make a fabric so beautiful.

One morning, carrying a heavy, imbalanced handbag on my shoulder and with my mother in tow, I spotted two turkeys strutting outside the Churchgate station.

The turkeys are no metaphor– they really were there, the turkeys. Outside the garbage strewn back-gate of Western Line’s last point, the birds, males I presume, walked proudly in the lane full of early morning commuters.

Then my mother displayed typical Mumbai behaviour. ‘Oh that’s ok, she said, ‘they are here usually in the morning and disappear by evening.’ I watched them chase a female. A female turkey, that is. The third bird was almost inside the Stadium restaurant. I wished it safety. ‘Let’s go. We may not get a cab till CST and then we’ll miss the train and then how will we ever reach Pune,’ she said, hoping to take my mind off what must be a regular sight for her. All this she poured before I could mumble ‘Shivneri.’

And what those birds did through the day, she must not have ever spared a thought to. She must see them every day, then perhaps hear some train announcement coming from the station nearby, realize the time or rather the shortage of it, and rush into the busy day. So, wondered the non-Mumbaikar me, what could these birds that weren’t seen so commonly even in the jungles of India, be doing on a busy Monday in the middle of a Mumbai road? A little shudder reminded me of the heavy handbag as I thought whether my mother saw the same birds every day.

They were not led by any human. Or a dog too. I decided to scan the restaurant menus of South Mumbai the next time I happened to be in one.

How magnificently they walked, pecking at bins occasionally. There was always this other angle, a slight chance, and Georgio Tsoukalos would agree– what if the underworld was actually rife with shape-shifters and unfriendly aliens? The turkeys did seem to know their way well. Too well. And they hypnotized the public enough to not get themselves into anybody’s conscious thought.

Imagine– three gangsta turkeys, plumes shining and stuff, boarding a local from Virar early morning. The crowd dispersing, respectfully and not in their senses, letting them get in before the train moved. The birds standing at the door through the journey with élan, cluck-clucking through some secret conversation. Maybe I should pay close attention to their clucks. It could be in Morse. Because it’s extremely funny, funny in ‘this chicken tastes funny’ way, to spot foreign birds strutting on the roads of Mumbai. Or maybe, I just didn’t pause enough, like others around me, to discover the reality.

It could have been a bad day
It could have been a good one,
For I oscillated between moods
Phone calls
Emails
Birthday wishes
And then an hour of
Aimless shuffling on itunes.

It could have been a bad day
It could have been a good one…
With a flat tyre
A cancelled trek
Two well-brewed coffee mugs
And a handful of
Bad printouts

It could have been a bad day
It could have been a good one,
With a Sri Lankan souvenir lost
A good friend gone abroad
Restlessness unbound
And three well-planned attacks
On my self-esteem.

It could have been a bad day
It could have been a good one…
With the restlessness transforming
Into wanderlust
And then to a trapped feeling
Of not being able to get out;
then again, wanting to, at least, roam in
the city I try to love

And then,
After a day’s work
As I held the key to my home
The dull light bulb from above
cast a city’s silhouette on the welcome mat-
the contour of my key.

If you do, it’s a snack better than the best sodium monoglutamate-coated chips (a snake, if you are from Ahmedabad). If you don’t, it’s an evil brown salty, powder-coated pill of something horrendously sour that smells like fart and you wouldn’t want one on your tongue, thank you very much. If you are one of the latter, stay away.

Hand-pulled stalls with piles of churan greet enthusiasts and non alike near Ranino Hajiro in the winding old city of Ahmedabad. At this junction where the road parts into trinket and fabric lanes, vata-kapha body types (I believe pitta people do not much care for sour) treat themselves with a variety of mukhwas.

There are the bite-y ones for those who are hungry– dried, ripe mangoes coated in jeera-sugar-salt mix. The same base enveloped in a mixture with red chilli powder added. Then there’s anardana. Ah, anardana. How much I miss it, the dried pomegranate pods encased in some mysterious punchy magical churan-powder, to be rolled on the tongue till the packet’s over and the skin from the ceiling of the mouth begins to peel. And a more royal relative of it, the gulkand-added version. Gulkand– the king of all things sweet, the best way a rose can present itself. And the king of them all, the chhuhara. The best date.

Then there are the less bite-y ones, the particular brand of blighters that give you a kick in the mouth and later in the belly- the asafoetida ingrained hingwati, or the evil tamarind laddoos that make you wink. Or the Amla suparis and jeera golis. Deadly ammunition all, against boredom, lack of appetite, melancholy and possibly e-coli.

Taste each first, sample them all. If possible, from every stall. There are subtle differences from vendor-to-vendor. Like wine, different kind of pomegranates and different varieties of mangoes yield different tastes with the same churan powder. Watch out for the overly moist, the overly salty, and the worst of all, the overly sweet.

Choose well. Learn the art. Appreciate the taste, the after-taste. It’s a quirk few have, a knack not many possess; the ability to gobble these sour-sweet-salty pellets, these smack-y, hard-hitting bullets.

Flaunt your passion. Boo the weak-tongued, the weak-bellied who frown upon you.

Like this:

to hear your language, from across continents, when the mind gets infested with Dementors.

Dear Tonks,
Compositus Modestus for your mind
Expecto Patronum for your thoughts
It's times like these that make me wish
I was a wizard and you were a witch
A spell here, to clean the mess
A spell there, for happiness
A bit of potion, if I could make
A little stress, away - I would take
Would fly on the broom and reach there
Or the Floo network to be where you are
I wish so much, I really do
To take these problems away from you
To take you in my arms and fly away
Where it's only fun, joy and play
Love
Lupin

Like this:

How delightful is this visual extension of the brand identity! The two-circle mouse is not much visible, I was standing at a busy junction and had only my cellphone, but it’s quite cute and looks like this: oO

In coach no. 78-ish
of an unwilling train,
a bothered traveller, me
sits wincing in the rain

It’s an unruly collection:
about 73 cars punctuated with bicycles
I sit honking on my bike
far behind in the stream of obstacles

The raincoat covers me
but not all the digital devices
I worry getting splattered
and losing work in the crisis

Rubber-plastic smells,
smoke-coated drops,
an amused, mucky stray
the busy, bothered cops:
all links of the chain,
where I sit wincing in the rain.

A large lady in blue,
on a tiny cerulean scooter
uncertain and under-confident
ahead of an annoyed commuter:
her legs dangle on each side
throughout the snail-slow ride

and I sit wincing in the rain
with worry frying my brain
while she does what doesn’t suit her
on the tiny cerulean scooter

twenty minutes ahead,
I’ve grown horns of impatience
I honk, honk and honk
she displays sudden confidence
and scoots away at long last
for the train’s now moving fast
The road’s now clearing up
the tram’s now a TGV
and I’m loving the drops
while thinking of home and tea

The lights go red
the mind’s worrying no more,
my helmet visor’s up
though it’s beginning to pour

I’m singing out loud
a toothless old chap stares
nearby, another dangly-legged lady
for a battle ride prepares

Such creatures of habit are we:
the tram’s become a TGV,
I’ve grown to love the drops,
the greens have inspired a song,
I’ve braved the jammed lane,
but still wincing in the rain.